The first reason why they do not
believe the Pentateuch was composed by a single author is that they make the
unwarranted assumption that a single author cannot create the anomalies found
in the Pentateuch, at least not as many as exist in the Pentateuch. (Clayton
Howard Ford, The Logical Fallacies of the Documentary Hypothesis [2021],
77)
This is itself an unwarranted assumption.
If a single author is capable of creating one anomaly, what is to stop him from
creating one hundred anomalies? At which point does the number of anomalies
cease to be the work of a single author and become the work of multiple
authors? (Ibid., 77 n. 10)
Baden says that Gen. 37 creates a contradiction
because it has two groups of merchants, the Ishmaelites and the Midianites,
take Joseph to Egypt, He reviews the attempts by several commentators and
scholars to resolve this contradiction. Some have suggested that the Midianites
pulled Joseph out of the pit and then sold him to the Ishmaelites, but this
does not explain Gen. 37:36, which says that the Midianites sold Joseph to Potiphar
in Egypt (This explanation is further strengthened by the realization, as
pointed out to me by Rav-Noy in a personal communication, that Genesis never
says that the Midianites took Joseph to Egypt. Thus, Gen. 37:36 could e
understood to mean that the Midianites sold Joseph to Egypt and to Potiphar
through the Ishmaelites. Joseph, who )was in the pit and therefore never saw
what actually transpired, assumed that the Midianites pulled him from the pit
because his brothers sold him to them [Gen. 45:4-5]. Admittedly, this
explanation is splitting hairs, which is one reason why I still prefer the
explanation that the two groups are actually one group). Abraham ibn Ezra
suggested that the two groups are actually one group who are called by two
names, as Judges 8:24 indicates. But Baden rejects that explanation because Gen
37 does not explicitly say the two groups are the same. So he dismisses this
explanation as “midrashic” (Joel Baden, The Composition of the Pentateuch,
1-12).
His explanation is that a single
author would never have created the contradiction; two authors must have
contributed to this passage. One another, J, had the brothers selling Joseph to
the Ishmaelites, who take him to Egypt; the other author, E, had the Midianites
pulling Joseph out of the pit and then taking him to Egypt. The contradiction
came about when a compiler combined the two stories (Ibid.).
Critics of the Hypothesis might
ask, “If an author would not create this contradiction, why would the compiler?”
In an endnote, Baden addresses this question.
The presence of both the
Ishmaelites and Midianites in the narrative could have been understood by the
compiler in either of the standard ways we have encountered in the introduction
if we imagine him being concerned with this at all. Either he thought that the
Midianites were the ones who sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites, confusing as this
is (and contradictory with 37:36), or, more likely, he simply saw the two
groups as the same, not only because they may have been conflated in Israelite
thought by the time the compiler worked (as Gunkel would have it [Genesis,
393]; this is a far better use of the evidence of Judg 8:24 than is made by
those who argue for an authorial equation of the two groups), but because they
fulfilled precisely the same function in both stories: the Arab caravan that
brought Joseph to Egypt. (Ibid., 264, n. 30).
So Baden starts off by essentially
saying that an author cannot see the two groups as being the same, then
contradictions himself by concluding that a compiler can see the two groups
as being the same. He never explains why an author cannot do what a compiler
can do. (Ibid., 128-29, emphasis in bold added)
